MAY 26, 2025 – Visiting us for several days at the Red Cabin are two of my wife’s cousins—Brian and Eric. Brian I keep calling “Byron” by mistake, and half the time when someone shouts, “Hey, Eric!” I think I’m being hailed, but as it turns out, I seem to be wrong 100% of the time. Though Byron . . . I mean Brian . . . and (the other) Eric are brothers just a few years apart, if you were meeting them for the first time, you’d never guess that they grew up anywhere close to each other.
Brian is a retired computer scientist/engineer/specialist who worked for decades for the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA), on the largest public transportation systems in the country. When he puts on his stylish eyeglasses for driving, he looks for all the world as if he were impersonating John Dean—in 1974. He and his wife are not only world travelers but they’ve hosted nine foreign exchange students from eight different countries. A dedicated marathoner back in the day (and founder of a highly popular and successful marathon training group in Chicago), Brian is aptly described as bookish (which is how Brian describes their oldest brother, Chris, who lives in Virginia), even keeled and quick to laugh.
Eric is a logger man in the mountains of Colorado. He lives in the remarkable log home that he started building 30 years ago—and is still working on. He fells timber and mills it himself, and over the years he’s personified the “gig” economy, at least within the ambit of rural construction and related needs of his rural community. Along the way Eric has become a master furniture builder, which is what brought him to the Red Cabin for a few days while he assembles an über bench[1] that he designed and crafted for Cha-Ro-Ke II, the lake home of Beth’s oldest brother and sister-in-law on the west shore of Grindstone Lake. (The project had been commissioned several years ago at a large family (Beth’s maternal side) reunion in Colorado.) Eric cuts the image of a mountain man straight out of “central casting.” Though a gentle soul, his hands are calloused and abused, and his face and gait reflect long hours of heavy labor in the sun and at high elevations. He’s led a rugged life, but his smarts and broad range of practical skills have earned him the nickname, “Chief,” among his friends and compatriots back in the Rockies[2].
The (three) brothers in their early youth first lived in Washington, D.C., while their father (Beth’s uncle, Robert), an architect, worked at the AIA. The family then moved to Chicago’s North Shore, where as a city planner, Bob became renowned for his creative and visionary ideas. The brothers’ mother, Carol, meanwhile, smart, highly educated and ever so pleasant and interesting company, loved classical music (as did Bob), and became a big fan of the SPCO through their appearances at Ravinia.
Beth tells that when Bob’s family visited her family and grandparents in Byron, Illinois, Eric would leave his “city kid” brothers inside and run off to do “country kid” things, such as shooting a gun and dissecting frogs. Chris and Brian forever remained “city kids,” while Eric took seriously Horace Greeley’s directive aimed at the “young man” . . . and never looked back.
Last week, Brian offered to fly from Chicago to Colorado, help Eric load up the parts to the “über bench” and drive to northwestern Wisconsin to assemble and christen the masterpiece at Cha-Ro-Ke II. Once the task is completed, the brothers plan to take a long road trip up through northern Minnesota, the Dakotas, Wyoming and back down to Colorado. From there, Brian will fly back to Chicago.
After a delightful casual dinner over at Cha-Ro-Ke II yesterday evening, Brian, Eric, Beth and I carried the conversation back to the Red Cabin. Over beer and pistachios, the talk lasted until nearly midnight. Brian and I continued along a political tangent until we’d pretty much slain all the dragons. It was half-past twelve when I suggested we take a look at the stars from the vantage point of the dock.
It took a while for our eyes to adjust, but gradually a few thousand stars turned into a few million and through the astronomical binoculars, many billions. It didn’t take long before the amazing celestial display sparked a conversation about . . . religion; not that either of us is religious or even “spiritual,” but both of us are awed by science and scientific discovery. Some people—I among them—would say that science is, in effect, “God,” the nature and character of which is all in how you defined it. Brian agreed that a perfectly fine definition is “the sum total of the laws of physics—as thus discovered by homo sapiens and as yet unknown to us.”
As we talked, the stars doubled in intensity by reflection in the glass-still lake water. It was no wonder, we agreed, that early humans invented religion. How else to explain the magnificence of the inexplicable—untold millions of stars, many groups among them posing as recognizable shapes suspended over the earth? Add to them the mysteries of existence right down on earth—life, death, famine, thirst, abundance, breath-taking beauty, heart-striking fears; at every turn, random phenomena good and bad. Yet with the inexorable turn of the wheel, one discovery after another occurred, sometimes by inquiry, often by chance, until eventually a methodical approach to knowledge evolved in the form of the scientific method. One by one, myth, taboo, superstition fell or faded. Knowledge, in turn, exploded geometrically, then exponentially, leaping light years ahead of religion. The stars symbolize both the knowledge we have—and the infinite knowledge that awaits us.
These are the thoughts prompted while viewing the stars from the end of the dock. The conversation, however, requires visitors from the mold I’ve here described. In this age of discord and disruption, we must seek and savor such exchanges more often.
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© 2025 by Eric Nilsson
[1] Originally designed to be a porch or deck glider, it morphed into a “conversation piece” bench with a back and arms.
[2] When I told Eric about my lumber hoarding, he knew exactly what I was talking about. “You and I think a lot a like,” he said. Coming from a real logger man, this was very much a compliment.
